Lourdes Garcia-Navarro

Dario Lopez MillsN/A

Lourdes Garcia-Navarro is an NPR international correspondent covering South America for NPR. She is based in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Previously, she served a NPR's correspondent based in Israel, reporting on stories happening throughout the Middle East. She was one of the first reporters to enter Libya after the 2011 Arab Spring uprising began and spent months painting a deep and vivid portrait of a country at war. Often at great personal risk, Garcia-Navarro captured history in the making with stunning insight, courage and humanity.

For her work covering the Arab Spring, Garcia-Navarro was awarded a 2011 George Foster Peabody Award, a Lowell Thomas Award from the Overseas Press Club, and an Edward R. Murrow Award from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Alliance for Women and the Media's Gracie Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement.

Before her assignment to Jerusalem began in 2009, Garcia-Navarro served for more than a year as NPR News' Baghdad Bureau Chief and before that three years as NPR's foreign correspondent in Mexico City, reporting from that region as well as on special assignments abroad.

Garcia-Navarro got her start in journalism as a freelancer with the BBC World Service and Voice of America, reporting from Cuba, Syria, Panama and Europe. She later became a producer for Associated Press Television News before transitioning to AP Radio. While there, Garcia-Navarro covered post-Sept. 11 events in Afghanistan and developments in Jerusalem. In 2002, she began a two-year reporting stint based in Iraq.

In addition to the Murrow award, Garcia-Navarro was honored with the 2006 Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize for a two-part series "Migrants' Job Search Empties Mexican Community." She contributed to NPR News reporting on Iraq, which was recognized with a 2005 Peabody Award and a 2007 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton.

Garcia-Navarro holds a Bachelor of Science degree in International Relations from Georgetown University and an Master of Arts degree in journalism from City University in London.

It's election season in Brazil, and a group of young women hold up placards outside the Cuiaba airport in support of their candidate. The capital of the central Brazilian state of Mato Grosso is best known for its cattle ranching and agriculture. It is the Texas of Brazil — big, flat and hot with people who moved here from all over the country as kind of frontiersmen.

For the past two decades, one man has politically loomed above them all. His name is Jose Riva. He's been a politician in the state for 20 years, presiding over the state legislature in one form or another.

Parallels

3:49 pm

Thu September 18, 2014

Marina Silva, shown here in Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday, is tied in polls with incumbent President Dilma Rousseff. Silva, the candidate for Brazil's Socialist Party, says if elected next month, she would be "the first social environmentalist president."

Marina Silva, Brazil's former environment minister, tells a story about when she had her environmental awakening. She was young, the daughter of poor rubber tappers, living in an isolated community in the Amazon with seven siblings. Suddenly, building crews showed up outside her door, paving a road in the middle of the forest.

The men didn't only bring a means of transport to the outside world — they also brought a malaria epidemic that killed two of her sisters and two other relatives.

Latin America

4:19 pm

Tue August 19, 2014

It's been over a month since the World Cup ended in Brazil, but the shame of the country's blowout loss remains. Once, Brazilians were welcomed in other countries with talk of Brazil's soccer dominance; now, everyone merely speaks of their historic defeat against Germany.

Sat August 9, 2014

The story of Lenira de Oliveira and her dead lover's letter is a tale of Brazil. It's a story of love, jealousy, forgiveness, life after death and the criminal court system. And it's true — though it sounds like fiction.

It sounds, in particular, like the work of the late Gabriel Garcia-Marquez.

Parallels

3:33 pm

Fri August 1, 2014

Evangelical Christians hold their hands out in prayer during the annual March for Jesus in downtown Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2013. Evangelicals play an increasingly large role in the nation's politics.

Everaldo Dias Pereira — known to his flock as Pastor Everaldo — shakes the hands of potential voters at a shopping mall in a suburb of Sao Paulo in Brazil.

As he wishes them the peace of the Lord, a group of supporters shout out: "Enough of corruption, enough of people who don't know the word of God. We want Pastor Everaldo."

The pastor is running for president, and even though it is unlikely he will win — polls show he only has 3 percent of the vote — his socially conservative message resonates among many of the evangelical faithful.

Fri July 11, 2014

We've been hearing a lot about what's been happening on the field in Brazil during this World Cup, but advocacy groups say what's been happening outside of the stadiums has been worrisome. NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro in Sao Paulo reports on what the World Cup has really cost Brazil.

Latin America

6:39 pm

Tue July 8, 2014

And now on to Sao Paulo, where NPR South America correspondent Lourdes Garcia-Navarro caught the game at a bar. And, Lourdes, I assume there is collective anguish, albeit very loud anguish right now. What's the mood?

Brazilian street artist Paulo Ito has captured the spirit of the World Cup with two controversial images: One depicts a starving Brazilian boy with nothing but a soccer ball to eat; the other depicts even protesters watching the games on television. They both speak to viewers worldwide about the costs of staging the mega event. Ito explains what inspired his work and what's happening in Brazil.

Tue July 1, 2014

All right, we're introducing you to a new word today. It's Portunol. It's a language - well, sort of. It's a mixture of Spanish and Portuguese and it is how many Spanish-speaking fans at the World Cup are communicating with their Portuguese-speaking, Brazilian cousins. The results are not always pretty. NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro has this reporter's notebook on South America's great language divide.

4:30 pm

Fri June 27, 2014

Luis Suarez's sponsors are dropping him, his future at his team Liverpool is in doubt and his 2014 World Cup is over. FIFA dealt the Uruguayan soccer player an unusually harsh sentence for biting his opponent, and his home country is outraged.

Latin America

4:20 pm

Thu June 26, 2014

One might think Brazilians are rooting only for Brazil. But South America's largest country is much the U.S., in that it is a nation composed of many immigrant groups. All Things Considered watches World Cup games with Brazilians of both Japanese and Italian descent, to see who Brazilians root for when they don't root for Brazil.

Latin America

4:12 pm

Thu June 19, 2014

One year from million-strong protest marches in Brazil, Brazilians are marking the anniversary with more demonstrations. There are fewer protesters than a year ago, when Brazilians expressed their anger over World Cup costs and the government's neglect of housing, health, transportation and employment issues at home.

Sports

5:17 am

Wed June 18, 2014

Iraqis attend Mass at the Chaldean Church of the Virgin Mary of the Harvest, in Al-Qosh on June 15. Both Christians and Muslims fleeing the ISIS takeover of Mosul in northern Iraq have taken refuge in Al-Qosh, an ancient Christian village.

About 20 miles outside the embattled northern Iraqi city of Mosul lies the Christian village of Al-Qosh. It's taken in about 2,000 residents from Mosul who fled after the militant Islamist group ISIS captured that city.

In recent days, news coverage from Iraq has focused largely on the Sunni-Shiite divide in that country. But Iraq is also home to a Christian community, which traces its origins in the earliest days of Christianity.